


Human Like You

by heavenorspace, twobirdsonesong



Series: A Boy and His Wolf [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: A Boy and His Wolf, Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Art, Beacon Hills High School, Clumsiness, Developing Relationship, Drabble, Gen, M/M, Meet-Cute, Time Skips, Wolf Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 01:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1326193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenorspace/pseuds/heavenorspace, https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the second day of high school, Stiles runs into upperclassman Derek Hale, someone he's not friends with but still feels a strange, deep connection with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Like You

**Author's Note:**

> A Boy and His Wolf is a collaborative project between [heavenorspace](http://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenorspace/pseuds/heavenorspace) and myself.
> 
> It will be a series of vignettes, out of chronological order, set in a world where Derek, in the form of a wolf, first encountered Stiles when he was a toddler playing in the woods. Derek is under strict pack orders not to reveal himself as werewolf to the human boy and must only interact with him as a wolf. When Stiles is a child, their relationship is strictly platonic and protective in nature. As Stiles grows older that begins to change.
> 
> Each drabble will be accompanied by a piece of art drawn by heavenorspace.

(art by heavenorspace)

 

Stiles doesn’t mean to run into anyone on his way home from school.  His dad is going to let him get a car when he gets his license, especially since so often the Sheriff is too busy to pick him up, but until then he has to walk. He doesn’t mind. It gives him time to think. And it’s probably better than being the freshman whose dad picks him up from school in a police cruiser.

 

He’d planned to walk home with Scott again, like they had the day before, but it’s only the second day of school and Scott is already head over heels for some girl a year older than them named Allison and he’d told Stiles to go on without him after 6th period bell had rang. Scott had been leaning against his locker and staring moonily across the hall at the tall, willowy girl putting her own books away.  Stiles didn’t need to be a genius to know he was probably going to be walking home alone quite a lot.  He’ll be fine.

 

It’s not that Stiles doesn’t have any friends. He has friends. Scott is his friend. Lydia is his friend, even if she doesn’t always make eye contact with him.  He’s pretty sure he’s going to be friends with Danny, the big guy in his English and gym glasses who smiles at him with dimples in his cheeks and doesn’t seem to be put off by the way Stiles normally acts. Not the way everyone else is. Stiles doesn’t mean to be annoying, but he can’t help the way his brain fires a million miles a second along four different tracks at once.  He can’t help that his legs bounce and his fingers twitch without him even thinking about it.  He doesn’t mean to write essays about subjects so barely tangentially related to the topic at hand that his teachers can’t even properly grade him on it, even if his writing is excellent and his facts are spot on.  It’s just that he catches the thread of something and he has to follow it to the end.  He’s always been that way.

  
Besides, the wolf is his friend.  His _best friend_.

  
Stiles smiles as thinks about the big black wolf that sneaks into his house and goes for walks in the woods with him and sleeps at the foot of his bed with his dad is working overnight.

 

He turns the corner, eyes cast down on his shoes, and naturally runs smack into the solid body of someone else.

 

Stiles flails and splutters and only manages not to drop the books he’s carrying like a shield in front of his chest because that someone else is holding them almost the instant they slip from Stiles’ hands.

  
Stiles looks up, gasping for breath at the shook of the impact, and finds himself staring into pale green eyes that he swears flash gold in the sunlight.

 

“Derek,” Stiles blurts out automatically, looking into the passive, unfairly gorgeous face in front of him.

 

Stiles knows Derek Hale.  Well, he knows _of_ Derek.

 

He knows he’s the upperclassman with the big family who live out in a massive house in the woods.  He knows Derek takes Physics in third period and AP English and AP History and sits with his young sister during lunch even though it’s really not cool to sit with your younger sister at lunch.  Not that Derek ever seems to care about being cool. He doesn’t _have_ to care.  He just _is_ cool; he exudes it from every pore in his broad body.  He’s tall and has dark stubble shading his sharp jaw that really shouldn’t be allowed on anyone still in high school.  And he’s way too muscled for someone who doesn’t play any sports.  Not that Stiles has noticed how well Derek fills out his t-shirts and his leather jackets and snug jeans.  (He’s totally noticed.)

 

Stiles is scrawny.  Stiles is long and gangly and he trips when he gets out of cars and he knocks things off shelves just by looking at them.  Derek looks like it would take a hundred men to even knock him off his feet.  He stands with a surety Stiles doesn’t think he’ll ever master.

 

“Hi,” Stiles says because Derek still hasn’t said anything.  He’s just…standing there.  Staring at him with those crazy intense eyes as his nostrils flare sharply.  “Uhm, I’m sorry.”

 

“For what?”  Derek asks. 

 

There’s something so oddly familiar about him, about the way he stands and holds his head, but Stiles can’t even begin to place it.

 

“For running into you.” Stiles mimes their crash with his hands, jerking his head wildly, and then wonders why the fuck he just did that.  Derek blinks, but doesn’t look freaked out by him.  That’s new.

 

“It’s not your fault,” Derek protests softly.

 

This is not the conversation Stiles is expecting to have, not that he ever expected to have a conversation with Derek Hale. So far Stiles is pretty much ignored at the high school, which he’s used to after three years of a middle school career that pretty much entailed aggravating his teachers on a daily basis and getting weird looks from his peers every time he opened his mouth.

 

“Uhm.  I wasn’t looking where I was going.  And I was probably walking too fast, which is something I do. Sometimes.  Because of my legs, which are long. And sometimes completely out of my control.  Hopefully I’ll stop growing at some point and relearn how to walk like a normal human being.”

 

Derek’s eyebrows twitch in a way that’s so impossibly familiar that it stops Stiles’ short.  He blinks.  The twitch reminds him, bizarrely, of the way the wolf looks at him sometimes, when Stiles is pacing around his bedroom ranting and raving about something completely stupid.  But that’s insane. It doesn’t make any sense.

 

“I should have been paying more attention too,” Derek says and there’s something about it that kind of feels like a lie but Stiles doesn’t know why.

 

“Okay, so next time we both inhabit the same sidewalk at the same time we’ll make sure to keep our eyes up!  Eyes on the road and all.  At least you’re not a little old lady that I could have knocked over and killed.  My dad’s the Sheriff and I’m pretty sure he’d have to arrest me if I killed a neighbor via reckless walking.”  Stiles knows he’s babbling, but Derek looks like he’s almost starting to smile. That’s also new. Usually his rambling annoys the fuck out of people who aren’t his dad.

 

“Uhm, thanks for grabbing my books,” Stiles says, looking down at where Derek is still clutching his history and math books to his stomach. He’s really glad Derek apparently has Spiderman-like reflexes because he did not want to have to explain to his dad why his books are all scuffed up and dirty on the second day of class.

 

“You’re welcome,” Derek responds, gruffly, like he’s not used to talking.  But Stiles has seen him chattering away with his sister, Cora at lunch the last two days. And he’s seen Derek around town over the years, talking to clerks and his parents and even the Sheriff. So maybe he does weird Derek out. Except it really doesn’t feel like way.  Stiles knows what it looks like when someone is desperate to get away from him.  And Derek is not.

 

“So, uhm…how’s school going?”  He asks inanely.

  
Derek tilts his head _just so_ and that reminds Stiles of the wolf too.  It’s such an intimately familiar gesture, one that he’s seen from his wolf over and over again that Stiles can’t even beginning to process. But he feels it in his gut that he’s seen it before, a hundred times over.

 

Stiles wants to say something stupid, something like, “I feel like I know you,” but that’s ridiculous.  Even though it’s true.  Derek doesn’t feel like a stranger to him even though he sort of is.  All these years living in Beacon Hills together and Stiles has never really crossed paths with Derek. They’re at least three years apart – Cora is closer to his age but she is way, way too cool to talk to him. He’s seen Derek around town, but that’s about it.

 

There’s no reason for him to have this feeling in his bones like they’ve known each other for years.  But that doesn’t make the feeling go away.  It sits there in his bones and his gut, a puzzle he doesn’t even begin to know how to solve.

  
Stiles rubs absently at his chest, where his heart is beating just a little too fast.  Derek’s nostrils flare again, like there’s a particular strong scent in the air, but Stiles doesn’t smell anything unusual.  “Can I have my books back?”

 

Derek looks down at the books like he didn’t even realize he was still holding them, before thrusting them out to Stiles.

 

“Thanks,” Stiles says, taking them and juggling them into position.  “Uhm, see you around?  Maybe.”

 

Derek nods jerkily and Stiles carefully steps around him. So Derek is a little strange, but he’s nice, Stiles thinks as he continues on his way home.  Nicer than most people anyway.  Stiles smiles to himself, clutching his books tighter to his chest.  He feels lighter and happier than he has in weeks.

 

“Eyes on the road, Stiles!” Derek suddenly calls from somewhere behind him.

  
But when Stiles turns around, a huge doofy grin on his face, Derek is gone. Stiles smiles all the way home.


End file.
